Ms Marcella Stakem:

In the Society of St. Vincent de Paul we do not generally get a lot of queries about RAS. Rent supplement and HAP are the two main schemes about which we get a lot of queries.

In response to the question of how the State could use its dominance in the market, the local authority should, as Ms O'Reilly said, take a more proactive role in keeping tenants within their tenancies. If there are any difficulties with rent arrears, the local authority should take a more proactive approach and its first port of call should be to keep those tenants in those tenancies. That not only saves the tenant much stress and worry but also saves the State a lot of money because the next port for the person concerned or for the whole household could be emergency accommodation. It therefore makes sense for the local authority to take a more proactive approach and ask itself what it needs to do to keep the tenant in the house.